Gala Concert, Head Girls and Junior School announcement

Tonight, Girls Grammar will host its Gala Concert and we know that the magnificence of the performances, the strength of our Music community, and the quality of music education at BGGS will be evident to all. There was an excited and expectant air about the School today as girls rehearsed for their performances and, this evening, we look forward to Tarita Botsman (1988) narrating our experience of Portraits.

Quite apart from the obvious value of nourishing the soul, bringing joy to both the music maker and the listener, music education brings wider benefits, particularly within the context of education. Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Leah Shafer traces the links between musical training and executive function in her article, ‘Bolstering the case for Music in Schools’ (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/03/music-lessons). Fortunately, at Girls Grammar there is no need to ‘bolster the case’ for Music in our School but it is interesting, nonetheless, to remind ourselves of some of the reasons we value it so deeply.

Shafer writes:

If educators want to develop critical, creative thinkers who can set and accomplish their own goals — and who can use those skills to strengthen their math and reading skills — they may want to take another look inside the music room…… For a child to play an instrument, she needs to stick to her goals, pay sustained attention, and be flexible enough to switch back and forth between tempos and styles.

These habits draw heavily on executive function skills and cognitive processes that include problem-solving, goal setting, and flexible thinking. Importantly, music doesn’t merely require executive function skills, it builds them.

But while we increasingly hear much about the research that attests to music’s ability to improve cognitive capacity, there is so much more to it. As our Coordinator of Strings, Mr Michael Patterson once wrote to me:

I appreciated your message about doing things for the inherent joy or satisfaction. Some teachers advertise music education as a way to ‘get smarter’ or get better NAPLAN scores or to open neural pathways. This is great and may well be true, but I have always thought that making music is an incredible satisfaction and achievement in its own right.

‘Not that long ago, music was a rare and feeble whisper in a wilderness of silence. Now it is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe’, wrote Howard Goodall in The Story of Music (2013). ‘How on earth did that miracle happen?’ Tonight, we look forward to the miracle of music in some of its finest forms when our Girls Grammar musicians perform.  It will undoubtedly be an occasion to Unveil Musical Masterpieces with our BGGS Gala Concert 2024—Portraits.

Our inaugural Head of Junior School has been appointed and will commence in January 2025. Ms Karen McArdle is currently Head of Junior School at St Catherine’s in Toorak (Melbourne) and was previously foundation Head of Junior School at Ipswich Girls Grammar School. She is deeply experienced and will be a reassuring appointment for our families. There will be opportunities to introduce Ms McArdle to the community more fulsomely early next year, when she will have the opportunity to share her educational vision and get to know our School, its staff, students and families.

How fortunate we are to have so much to celebrate, be proud of, and look forward to.